Yes, another "Dark Knight" entry (SPOILERS)

• All right, I just couldn't wait until the weekend: I saw "The Dark Knight" for a third time this afternoon at the Regal Lincolnshire IMAX, and I must be a lone voice of dissent by saying it's not worth the extra cash to see it in the super-large format. The movie keeps leaping from widescreen to fullscreen to some aspect ratio in between, sometimes within the same scene. I found the whole thing to be annoying, quite honestly. That being said, Bruce's high-dive in Hong Kong is quite a sight on a 70-foot-tall screen -- it just didn't add $7 worth of entertainment to my ticket.

• Early in "The Dark Knight," Bruce Wayne tells Lucius Fox he's "playing this one close to the chest," referring to his dealings with a military cell phone project. About 45 minutes later, Harvey Dent says this to Jim Gordon: "You do play things close to the chest!" A piece of mismatched dialogue like that must be on purpose, right? The Nolans must be implying that Dent and Gordon are working more closely together than we realize, right?

• Near the end of the film, The Joker tells Bruce "you and I are destined to do this forever," which is a genius line of dialogue, working on so many levels. It works within the story, within the overall Batman saga, within the permanence of film itself, within the fabric of American pop culture, and within the metaphorical relationship Batman and The Joker have to all "heroes" and "villains." It's also chilling, given who's delivering the line.

• The loudest critics of the movie, aside from a certain weekend radio host who "hated" the movie and found it utterly pretentious (and this coming from a guy whose favorite movies are "There Will Be Blood" and "Magnolia"), are those who see it as some kind of neo-Conservative screed, endorsing torture, wiretapping, and the concept of enemy combatants. (Check out this poor excuse for a review from that radio host's professional hero.) Yes, all those ideas are explored by the movie, but I'd say it goes nowhere near endorsing those things. Bruce Wayne is clearly ashamed of the things he is forced to do in the movie, and Harvey Dent is partly driven to madness by the things he has done. And both are pushed to their extremes, ultimately, because The Joker threatens that which they love the most. I think the film acknowledges that nothing is black and white in our chaotic world, and that deciding what is right and what is wrong isn't always easy. You'd think the final scene of the movie would drive that point home, wouldn't you?

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Sean Stangland is a Daily Herald page designer and copy editor, and a lifetime resident of the Northwest suburbs.

He was raised on a steady diet of Disney, "Star Wars" and Metallica, and he's always looking for new tastes to add to his pop culture palate.